Chapter 5: Black and Blue
August 1998
Slytherin Manor
Master Bedroom
(Voldemort)
Voldemort awoke early the morning of the eighth of August, a full three weeks after his last Death Eater meeting anticipating the next one, which was to be held that very night.
He had a lot to address-their all-time low numbers, their investment in the cause, the need to gain information on the Light Side (to which end, he planned for Draco and Narcissa to have something to say...lest they suffer his...displeasure). But for now, he watched the chinks of dust catch in the rays of the rising sun beneath the black canopy over his bed and thought about the dream he'd just had.
He couldn't remember much-surprisingly, he'd never been good at remembering his dreams. But he knew Fiona Goode was in it. He hadn't heard from the swamp witch since she'd surprised him at Malfoy Manor three weeks before...but he was frustrated by her silence. What did she know? Was she bluffing? How had she found them? And perhaps more than anything, he needed to know why she made him feel the way he did around her-like his own thoughts weren't his anymore after she invaded them with her frosty ease…
The truth of the matter was that Voldemort had never felt so vulnerable.
Forehead pounding, he tossed off the blankets and got up from bed, careful not to wake Bellatrix, who slept on as usual, blissfully unaware of anything.
He shut the bedroom door quietly behind him and headed down the hallway towards the Armory, where he kept his cauldron and potion ingredients. Bellatrix could never find out, no one could, at least not yet, he thought to himself as he slipped inside. Maybe it was making that fateful eighth Horcrux, maybe it was bringing Bellatrix back...but something changed in him after that.
Alone in the Armory without prying or curious eyes, Voldemort held up the Elder Wand and pointed it in the direction of the lamps lining the stone wall. He willed them to life with a nonverbal spell, but nothing happened.
"Incendio," he muttered and the lamps sprang bright with white fire, bathing the room in haunting silver shadows. He could no longer apparate or use nonverbal spells, but he could still use the Floo network and cast basic verbal charms...
But what about the Unforgivable Curses? Surely he could still cast those...he could even try tonight, but did he want to risk trying and failing in front of all his Death Eaters?
Voldemort leaned against his potion-making table and pressed his fingertips into his temples. He didn't want to admit to anyone, let alone himself, that ever since that fateful night in May, he, Voldemort, the Dark Lord, had been losing his magical power. He was turning into a...a...a Muggle? A Squib? No. It wasn't possible and he'd die a mortal death before he saw that happen.
He'd find an answer, he thought as he opened the violet flagon of unicorn blood he kept hidden in here and let a few drops of the viscous liquid fall down his throat. No one in history had ever split their soul eight ways before. He just needed to get his strength back-and the unicorn blood would ensure that, as long as he didn't caught drinking it.
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Feeling as refreshed as he we was going to, Voldemort slipped back into bed with Bellatrix just as the sun began to brighten and the Manor clocks chimed seven.
Suddenly, a low moan to his immediate left shook him from his reverie. He barely had time to get his wife's name out of his mouth before she jumped out of bed and tore off in the direction of the bathroom.
"Bella?" He called out. No answer. Sighing, Voldemort got out of bed again and padded across the carpet to the master bathroom door. "Bella?" He called again.
"Go away!" She shouted back, her voice sounding muffled through the closed door. Then he heard her getting sick.
It was over almost as soon as it began and then she was back in the bedroom, averting his eyes and staring shyly at the ground. The straps of her corseted nightdress were falling past her shoulders and her skin glistened with sweat, but he could tell she was pretending everything was alright.
"Are you ill?" He asked. She shook her head no. "Stressed?"
"Maybe. Or I could've eaten something funny," she said. Voldemort frowned. They'd had the same dinner the night before. He looked up at Bellatrix, still standing by the bathroom door all pale and sweaty. He couldn't have her getting sick, especially not now, when their position and cause were so precarious.
"You should go back to bed and try to get some more rest," he said finally. As he'd anticipated, Bellatrix's lips curved downwards in her familiar pout. "I'm fine, I'm awake, my stomach just had a thing in it that it didn't like!" She protested. But Voldemort remained unconvinced.
"That may be. But we need you healthy-"
"I AM FINE!" She interrupted. "Besides, today was supposed to be the day I signed everyone up for dueling practice before the meeting."
"-as I was saying, we need you healthy for you to best serve our movement. That's why, as your Dark Lord, I'm ordering you to rest."
"What the fuck?! That's-that's-" Suddenly, she was crying. And Voldemort was taken completely aback. He'd now shed tears a total of one time in his life-the night Bellatrix died-and was still trying to wrap his head around the process…could tears be triggered this easily?! And more importantly, how could he make them stop?
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(Bellatrix)
Everything felt wrong and Bellatrix was terrified, angry, sad and something she couldn't quite place all at the same time. First and foremost though, she didn't feel sick at all and yet Voldemort was forcing her to stay in bed all day and miss the Death Eater meeting. She tried to plead with him and of course would try again, but there was no use. Throughout the house, the clocks struck one in the afternoon and Bellatrix thought if she slept one more minute she'd never be able to sleep again. Because she wasn't sick...at least, not physically anyway. Mentally...she didn't know anymore. She felt like a stranger in her own body, like everything was changing more quickly than she could fathom even though nothing had really changed.
"Cat got your tongue?"
Bellatrix jolted upright and glanced left to right looking for the source of a familiar cool, female voice.
"You always look so surprised. I'm really just trying to keep you company." Oh. Right. The damn mirror. Bellatrix leaned back against her pillows and turned on her side to face the bureau...and the antique mirror above it. It was a beautiful piece, a sheet of blue-tinted sea-glass framed by silver serpents all entwined together. Unfortunately, it was talking to her. Slytherin Manor's resident mirror ghost had the unfortunate habit of cropping up whenever Bellatrix least wanted to deal with her.
"Go away, Elle!" She hissed, pulling the blanket up over her face.
"What? Just because I can see what you can't?"
"And what's that?" Bellatrix growled, her voice sounding muffled beneath the blankets.
"Oh. Now you're curious?"
Bellatrix pulled the blanket down below her nose and thinned her eyes at the mirror.
"You don't know anything about me. You never have."
"I'm not implying I know anything about you...I'm just telling you what I see."
"What you...see?" Bellatrix furrowed her brow, but tossed the blankets aside all the same and sat up on the bed to face the mirror.
"That's better. Now, look at yourself."
Still not understanding but otherwise curious, Bellatrix looked into the pool of sea glass, expecting to see something she didn't expect. But she only saw herself. She cocked her head to one side and really noticed her reflection.
"You think you're beautiful, don't you?" The mirror hissed condescendingly.
"Yes...I do," said Bellatrix. And she wasn't lying. She'd always known she was beautiful...stunning in fact...she'd used it to her advantage since she was a little girl, after all. She loved the shape of her jaw, the way her cheekbones swept up to reach her eyes. The nose she used to think was too long had even grown on her overtime, as she grew into it, physically and figuratively. It ran in her father's family after all, and marked her next in the long line of talented, pure-blooded witches and wizards to bear the noble Black name. And her hair, she thought, as she laughed at the way it fell in a tangled mess over her shoulders and down her back, her hair was her favorite of all.
"You can be as vain as you'd like," said the mirror in her cool voice. "But even you can't deny something's different."
Bellatrix frowned and stretched her arms out in front of her to examine them in the reflection-the scars she'd had since that night glinting in a patch of polluted sunlight along the bend in her wand arm. They intersected eerily at the point where her veins were most purple and contrasted sharply with the crisp black of her Dark Mark below them.
She thought again of her dreams..that night...the blood...the snake...and something warm began rising steadily in her throat.
"You're changing, Bellatrix. Too subtle for you to notice. But I do. And so does he."
"Shut up! I didn't ask you for your assessment," said Bellatrix impatiently. She ran the pad of her index finger along the bridge of the nose she'd grown to love and then used it to follow the lines of blue under her always so heavily lidded eyes. Subtle, yes. But there all the same. She hadn't been sleeping well since the wedding, what with the weird dreams and all.
And being married to Voldemort had been so different than she'd ever imagined, perhaps mostly because she'd never imagined it. Her fantasies always took her as far as a proposal or a wedding ceremony, but no further...maybe because Voldemort had always an unattainable end goal, something to strive for and better herself for, but never something to attain-like he was himself an abstract concept she'd never tried to wrap her head around simply because she never wanted to...and now...well...It couldn't all be anxiety about being married.
Her eyes lingered once more in the marks on her arm and they stood out so harshly just then that she could have sworn they were glowing.
She was trying to process all of this...the marks, the dreams, Narcissa's mysterious weakness, Voldemort's distance...were they all to waste away to nothing? And then she felt sick again.
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(Voldemort)
Malfoy Manor
1st Floor Dining Room
Voldemort was waiting for his Death Eaters to arrive for the meeting, but he couldn't stop thinking about Bellatrix. When he was with her, he found himself irritated by the smallest things and sometimes even, he couldn't wait to get away...but then as soon as he did, she was there imprinted in his mind the way she'd always been.
Strong, powerful...the kind of woman who could take care of herself. The kind of woman everyone was afraid of...the woman he needed to rule beside him...so different than the woman she became when they were together-weak, dependent, emotional, hardly able to string a coherent sentence together without whining. Yet this was the same person who'd once tortured two renowned and talented Aurors into permanent insanity, survived spending fifteen years in the maximum security ward at Azkaban prison and mastered spells many couldn't even dream of. She was a skilled enough Occlumens to do what had proved to all before her impossible-she could shield her mind from him.
But he'd never even have guessed at any of that if the only Bellatrix Black he knew was the woman he laid beside at night.
It was fucking frustrating as anything, he thought, digging his fingers into the tabletop without really noticing.
The scars from that fateful night caught in the candlelight, looking red and raw as ever against his skin and he quickly pulled down his sleeves to cover them.
"Where's Bella?" asked Narcissa Malfoy, as if reading his thoughts, even though he knew she couldn't. She entered the dining room like a ghost, quiet and graceful and pale in stormy blue robes. She settled herself into her usual seat next to Bellatrix's empty one while her house elf set the table.
"She could not attend the meeting tonight," he replied curtly.
"But she's alright?" Narcissa asked, with a bit too much accusation in her tone. Voldemort's felt his judgment cloud over white-hot.
"That is none of your concern...and yet you question Lord Voldemort?" He kept his tone even, but he'd drawn the Elder Wand on her without even thinking.
Narcissa gasped and drew back so quickly that she almost knocked her chair over. Voldemort looked down at the wand and then back up at Narcissa's white face before stowing it hastily in his robe pocket.
"Please. I've done what you asked," she begged in a voice scarcely above a whisper. Her upper lip began to tremble so subtly he wasn't sure she knew. Voldemort ignored her. He didn't want her thinking he owed her anything because she was Bellatrix's sister. If anything, that only meant she had more to prove.
"They were so naive...I went right to the top, to Minerva McGonagall. She wouldn't tell me where they're hiding Harry Potter or what their plans are, but she was v-v-very sympathetic towards me...I do believe that with a little more time-"
"And you plan to announce this at the meeting?" Voldemort interrupted.
"Y-yes. Yes, of course," said Narcissa, nodding vigorously.
"Good," said Voldemort as the house elf filled his goblet with brandy. The doorbell rang and Narcissa half-rose from her seat to attend to it.
"My Lord?" She asked, her palms still resting on the tabletop. Voldemort again did not answer, but tilted his head to the side to indicate that he was listening.
"You would tell me, wouldn't you? If anything ever happened to her? She is my sister."
Voldemort frowned, but didn't know how to answer. Narcissa lingered for a moment and then hurried out of the room to let the Death Eaters in.
The meeting itself droned by in a blurry haze of more frustration. Narcissa's announcement about getting the Order of the Phoenix to believe her should have been met by cheers, excitement, even raucous ill-humor against the Order. Instead, her words were greeted only by silence. Voldemort had to exert nearly as much self control as he possessed to stop himself from using the Cruciatus Curse on every single one of them to set a precedent...but he was hesitant about revealing the problems with his magic.
He thought of trying to plan an attack just to give them something to do to get their excitement and drive to kill up again, but he didn't have any information to go off and couldn't risk another failure like the Battle of Hogwarts. He tried to explain this, but only ended up pressing Narcissa almost into tears when he shouted that the entire future of their battle plans rested for the moment on her ability to gain meaningful information.
And after he ended the meeting, all the Death Eaters but Travers, Yaxley and Rosmerta disapparated right away.
To further complicate matters, later that night in bed beside his wife, he fell asleep and dreamed for the first time since before Horcruxes.
He dreamt he was striding into a dark pub with a Hog's Head sort of feeling to it. It was located in a barn of some sort and bustling with a strange mix of characters talking animatedly over greasy flagons of beer and liquor. In a far corner, an older man with a steel grey beard and his hair in a ponytail was playing a guitar for tips.
But Voldemort had eyes only for the blonde woman sitting at the center of the bar, stirring her cocktail with a cherry stem.
"Fiona," he said as he pulled up the stool beside her and sat down.
"Voldemort. I was worried you wouldn't make it."
"But this is a dream. I'm not a fool."
"Maybe," she shrugged and went right back to stirring her drink. Voldemort waved down the toothless old bartender and ordered a smoky bourbon on the rocks. He'd had so many questions to ask Fiona, but now that she was here with him-even as a dream-he found he couldn't remember any of them. It wasn't exactly a pleasant feeling, he decided.
"Have you thought anymore about what I told you? That the threat might not be coming from the Muggle-Borns after all?"
Voldemort struggled to form an answer, but his thoughts were all soupy and hard to grab hold of. Fiona smirked like she knew exactly what she was doing and he envied anyone with power like that.
"No? Well, let me ask you this then. Did you hear about the witch burnings happening in the states? I would be surprised if you had. The media is doing anything they can to hush it all up. It's Salem all over again."
Witch Burnings? Fiona sighed.
"Here, let me show you." Before he could work out what she meant, she projected something into his mind. For a few seconds, all he could see and smell was fire. It glowed blue first, then orange, red, white, black as the crackles and pops were drowned out by a woman's last, desperate scream.
Then, just as soon as it all began, Voldemort was back in the dive pub looking at Fiona in her tight black dress.
"I thought you wouldn't know," she said nonchalantly. " I mean, when has your Ministry reported on anything useful? Even still, I don't think it has happened in your country yet. But be warned-it's a REVOLUTION. The Muggles are rising up against us!" She slammed her hands down on the counter and Voldemort had to suppress a dry laugh. "They've been tracking the movement of our kind for centuries! And now...well these 'accidents' can't be purely coincidental."
He couldn't help it. He laughed at her, crasser and more bitterly than he'd laughed at anyone in a long time. Muggles rising up against and killing wizards and witches? She couldn't be serious.
"Well, you'll believe what you'll believe," she said, frowning slightly. "But mark my words, the proof is gathering and soon even you won't be able to deny it. In the meantime, I'd watch yourself...and your nasty little wife, if I were you."
"Why?"
"Isn't it obvious, darling? That girl's knocked up with your baby."
~I'll fix your feet til you can't walk
I'll lock your jaw til you can't talk
I'll close your eyes so you can't see
This very hour, come and go with me
I'm Death I come to take the soul
Leave the body and leave it cold~
A/N: What is going on with everyone?! Read on to find out. And maybe leave me a review if you're feeling nice? I just signed up to do Camp NaNoWriMo, so hopefully having a daily word count deadline again like I did in November will encourage me to write more frequently.*crosses fingers*